The Flames that Forged a Soldier
by 1stTimeCaller
Summary: "Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other." - Carlos Castaneda Riza Hawkeye and her motivations for following her father's apprentice.
1. Chapter 1: The Uncanny Valley

**A/N: Hello everyone!**

 **I'll be finishing up my other story later this week, but I've had this story in my head for weeks and I wanted to get the first chapter out there. This is heavily inspired by the works of That_Hoopy_Frood. If you know of their work, you already know what certain elements of this story will contain. If you don't, I HIGHLY recommend you read their work. (also if anyone can let me know how to embed links on this site or if it's possible at all, I'd greatly appreciate it).**

* * *

 **The Flames that Forged a Soldier  
**

 **Chapter 1: The Uncanny Valley**

 _Uncanny Valley (n): The phenomenon whereby a computer-generated figure or humanoid robot bearing a near-identical resemblance to a human being arouses a sense of unease or revulsion in the person viewing it._

The moment the coffin was lowered into the ground, Riza started to forget the face of her mother.

Her face had changed so much over the past year that all of the images blended and blurred. Riza remembered the sunken cheeks she had seen last week, but were they once plump? Her hair had been matted and frayed as her health deteriorated, but what color would she have called it? Brown or blonde, or something in between? Her smile was loving, but tired. Riza couldn't remember if she used to beam with happiness or if her smiles had been serene. Was her mother a passionate person before she grew ill? Was she a calming presence, or was she fire?

Riza didn't care anymore.

She remembered her mother's actions far clearer. Every night, she would read to her, even when she became old enough and able to read by herself. The stories she told were classic struggles of good and evil. Evil always had a face, though, and it never won.

Her mother was good. Riza knew that.

So when the faceless disease crept through her body, there was no face to fight against. The priest said that she fought, but when the disease was inside you, Riza figured you were only fighting yourself.

She remembered when she was six, and her father started to teach her alchemy. Her mother had been proud, her father even moreso. She was gifted at the basics she learned, and she was amazed by the possibilities that presented themselves as she transmuted silly wooden toys and paper flowers. She could only copy a design she'd seen before, but she was naturally perceptive, so she could copy perfectly. She remembered, almost word-for-word, an argument that she wasn't supposed to hear late one night.

 _"I'm not saying she should start right away, obviously we need to give her another few years! But, say when she's fourteen. She's talented, she should learn."_

 _"The military have been sniffing around you for years, Berthold! If she's pulled from school, they'll know, and they'll start haranguing her too!"_

 _"She isn't stupid enough to consider joining them."_

 _"And what if something happens to us? She'll have nowhere to go! They'll take her and they'll use her and she'll have no option but to join!"_

 _"Your father may hate me, darling, but he's not about to put a hit out on us just to take her."_

 _"I have no idea what they're capable of, but I'm not taking my chances!"_

The fight had been resolved with the agreement that when she's old enough, Riza will be told her options and she will make the choice herself.

A year after, her mother was diagnosed, and the house began to collect dust. Riza remembered the first time she felt hunger. After three days without food, she realized that her mother was too ill to cook, and her father had not taken up the mantel. Riza cooked her first meal that evening, a simple soup, and brought some to her parents. Her mother's eyes shone, with gratitude and tears, simultaneously celebrating and mourning Riza's new-found skill. Her father ate hungrily, but barely acknowledged her as he spoke to the doctor.

Riza saw her mother waste away while her father did nothing to help, and decided that alchemy was not the solution to everything. She spent less and less time drawing circles, and more time using the skill her mother gave her instead; reading. She read scraps of worn paper scribbled in her mother's neat handwriting. Recipes. At seven years old, Riza could make cobblers and casseroles and bone broths. She was good at following the steps, and after a while, she even began writing her own recipes.

Now, at eight years old and standing at her mother's grave, she rubbed her father's back as he cried. He sounded completely savage, sobbing and shaking as the dirt was being shoveled back into the earth. She hated him in that moment, for being so weak. She hated herself for being unable to cry.

After a while, she moved away from him and picked up a shovel as well. The job was not going to be done by crying, or research, or hands shaking too hard to hold chalk.

Riza thought back to the argument her parents had, and decided she was going to stay in school.

* * *

She hadn't learned to feel lonely. She had grown up too fast to know the despair of a child's boredom. Boredom was a luxury to her; it meant that she had nothing to do.

Even the solitude of her house wasn't secluded enough for her at times. Every moment she spent in the house, she was cooking, or cleaning, or fixing, or reading. She grew out of the fairy tales quickly, instead studying schoolwork that was considered too advanced for someone her age. She had a partially-funded scholarship to keep.

Riza learned not to speak often. Her father spoke all the time, muttering to himself things she had either never learned or half-remembered. When she tried to engage him, he would just talk louder, but the subject matter rarely changed. He rarely spoke _to_ her. Sometimes he would look at her while he spoke, but it would still be like she wasn't in the room. Riza decided that he had lost his mind. He ate when given food, slept when he was too exhausted to stand and rarely leave his study for anything other than bathroom breaks and to send Riza for supplies or to pay bills. Riza knew they had very little money left when he started sending her with red envelopes instead of white ones. They were scraping to get by, delaying bills until they couldn't ignore them. This was one of the reasons she was desperate to keep her scholarship. They couldn't afford the school without it, and school was one of her only escapes from the house.

She allowed herself another escape once a week. She would go to the lake on a Friday evening, strip down completely in solitude, and swim in the clean, dark waters. She didn't know where she learned to swim. It was as natural to her as running, and she treasured the moments she spent under the water, when all of the noise of the animals and birds would mute to a dull throb and she would feel weightless. When she had begun coming here, she would think about her mother a lot, and wonder if death felt like the weightlessness of water.

After a few months of her new ritual, her thoughts were replaced by the only other two things in her life; her father and her school. She had made no friends yet in school, but that was her own choice. Any attempts on her peers' end to engage her were met with stoic silence or single-syllable replies. Being an only child, she had only learned an adult's sense of politeness. Children her age like playfulness, and she was unable and unwilling to engage them on that level. Their friendliness turned to cruelty, and she would sometimes hear whispers about her ragged haircut (she cut her own hair, short as a boy's and not very neat) and how she never ate lunch or played. They seemed to take a huge distaste to her reading during recess. Sometimes, she would let herself lie languidly on her back in the water for what felt like hours and think about these whispers. Other times, she would swim until her lungs ached.

When she was ten years old, she got out of the water after a particularly vigorous set of laps. Her legs were too tired to take her home, so she collapsed on the ground against the trunk of a tree to rest. She twisted herself sit up with her back against the trunk, barely registering the cold air on her wet skin.

"Tired little birdy. I thought you were going to drown."

She sat up straighter at the noise, eyes scanning the surrounding grounds. The lake was in a clearing of a small wooded area behind her house. The trees cast long shadows on the grass, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

"Who's there?" Her voice didn't waver. Fear was among the things she never got around to learning.

A new shadow appeared on the ground beneath her. It was thin and long, hanging from the shadow of a branch. She looked up.

The figure moved fluidly from branch to branch until it lowered itself onto the floor. Riza's eyes adjusted to the darkness. It was a boy. He was tall, probably as tall as someone about 15 or 16-years-old, but it was hard to tell his age from his face. He looked regal, almost like an adult, but clean and boyish at the same time. His hair almost reached his shoulders, long and black and so shiny it looked like he dipped it in motor oil. He towered above her, back straight, legs together and arms outstretched at the elbow, palms facing the sky. She wondered for how long he had been in the tree. Had he climbed it when she was swimming? Was he there before she arrived?

Was he always there?

Riza suddenly remembered an old Xerxian story she had read in school. It was about a puppeteer who made such beautiful puppets that they looked like they could come to life. The text described the puppets as 'uncanny'; something that looked almost human, but not quite. The word felt appropriate in her mind.

"What are you?"

His eyebrows shot up and his lips curved into a facsimile of a smile. His pale blue eyes glinted with glee.

"What an interesting question!" he slid down beside her, and she suddenly felt the urge to move away, something instinctively telling her to get up and run. This was the first time she had ever felt fear, and the first time she would ignore it. "Not _what are you doing here_ , or even _who are you_. I'm not sure how to answer." He rolled his tongue from cheek to cheek, as if tasting the question.

"Maybe I'm a lost traveler. I could have wandered off the road, distracted by something pretty." He lolled his head languidly to the side, facing her again. "Bird-watching, perhaps."

She hugged her bare knees to her chest. They were still tired, but the dull ache was slowly being replaced by an itching sensation. The boy before her didn't seem to notice her discomfort. That, or he ignored it.

"Or maybe I'm a dream. You could have fallen asleep under the tree. Or you could have drowned. Yes; maybe I'm a spirit, comforting you in death."

His blue eyes widened as she reached out her hand and grabbed a fistful of his hair, tugging it down and watching his head move helplessly in the same direction as her hand. He flinched at the sensation. She let go.

"You feel real enough."

The shock on his face was replaced by a broad grin, and he barked out a single syllable of a laugh.

"Clever miss. But are you sure you can trust what you feel?"

She shrugged, leaning more comfortably against the tree, somewhat comforted by the fact that whatever he was, he could feel pain. She considered his words for a while. She didn't know _what_ she could trust. Not her mother, who died two years ago. Not her father, who would starve to death and not even notice. She thought she could trust herself, but half the time she didn't feel real either. She wondered if she was any better than her father. He had slowly lost his mind, but he had at least cried at her mother's funeral. That was something sane people did; something she couldn't do. Maybe she was mad too, in a different way.

"So am I dead, then?"

He chuckled. "Not yet."

She thought of her father again.

"Am I insane?"

Another chuckle.

"Not yet."

* * *

 **A/N:** **I hope you enjoyed the first chapter! This is the start of a long-ish (6-9 chapters) story that will probably become part of a collection in future. That being said, it may be slow on the upload, because there are elements to the story that will be foreshadowed in some chapters and followed-up in later ones and I will need to write a couple of chapters ahead of releasing them to make sure I remembered the foreshadowing elements. But please do let me know what you think!**


	2. Chapter 2: Clarity

**A/N: Roy shows up in the next chapter, and then we get to the blossoming friendships! And nothing more until Riza's older! For now, I wanted to focus on Berthold and the moments of lucidity that Riza will be able to look back on fondly in the future. Please enjoy, and please leave a comment to let me know what you think!**

* * *

 _Clarity (n): the quality of being coherent and intelligible_

 _"I've decided what you are doing here."_

 _In her periphery, she sees his thin eyebrow arch as he turns his face to regard her._

 _"Oh?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _It has been over a year since their first encounter. He appears beside the lake every few weeks, usually sitting against a tree by the time she has finished swimming, unless it is winter and too cold for her to swim, in which case he slides down a tree and soundlessly lies beside her, never touching her but remaining close enough for her to feel his presence. The cold radiating from his skin is always cooler than the air surrounding her._

 _There is no schedule to his appearances, sometimes he will be there two weeks in a row and sometimes he will not show up for over a month. It has one of the few inconsistencies in her life. He is never the first to talk, but he knows more about her than she has told him. He knows her name, for one thing. And she has never seen him anywhere but by the lake, on the western shore. It is as if he is bound to the place, like he can never leave it._

 _As she lies in the grass, she usually tries to ignore him for some time before she gives in and speaks to him. Something primal tells her not to, like he is something to be avoided. But he is still something, and that is all she has in the way of company. Every time she sees him or speaks to him, he considers her like he has never met her before, re-evaluating every tiny movement or thought that she expresses. He feels like Judgement, and although she can't quite bring herself to care about his opinion, it is enough to be considered._

 _"So what have you settled on? A wood-dwelling man? A spirit? A figment of a lonely girl's imagination?"_

 _She scrunches her forehead, still looking up at the sky. "I don't know."_

 _"Ah. Doesn't sound like you've decided anything, if you can't even decide whether or not I'm real."_

 _She traces the stars with her eyes, making patterns of geometric shapes. "It hardly matters at this point what you are."_

 _"It matters a great deal to me. But please continue. So what am I doing here, then?"_

 _She stares at the stars that are beginning to sprinkle throughout the sky. "You're here to help me keep my voice."_

 _This earns a laugh. He often laughs when he is surprised by her. The sound is too feral and uncontrolled to be pleasing, exactly, but she gets the feeling that he likes to be surprised by her. It is like he is something all-knowing, so when she says or does something that he doesn't anticipate, she feels like she has gone off-script in some kind of story that he has written._

 _"Very profound, Riza. If not a bit self-centred."_

 _She turns her head to the side and looks at him. His hair is a little longer than when she first found him – or he first found her – but nothing else seems to have changed. He has the same sharp face, the same small but bright blue eyes. He looks at her with the same mixture of curiosity and knowing._

 _"Maybe I'm helping you keep your voice too."_

 _"Is that so?"_

 _"It doesn't sound like you use it much."_

 _This warrants another laugh from him, dry and gravelly like he is sick. But she has only known this rough voice, so he is either perpetually sick or this is his natural cadence. She returns her gaze to the stars. She doesn't use her voice much either, rarely has the need to. Sometimes, she has dreams where she is unable to speak, and unable to remember her name. Those dreams have no sound at all, and even her thoughts are fragmented and nonsensical. She wakes up sweating and panting and very, very cold. Those dreams are scarcer the more often she is in his company. She uses her voice. She hears her name._

* * *

The knock on the door surprises her, then annoys her in quick succession.

Necessity has turned her into a creature of habit. With such little time to herself, she has perfected an automation when it comes to handling her tasks. She prepares breakfast in the morning, wordlessly serving it to her father in his study or his bedroom, eats her own breakfast hurriedly, cleans up and leaves for school. After school she comes home, sorts the mail, makes dinner and cleans more. She does a deep-clean of two rooms a day, which means it takes her the working week to come full-circle. Afterwards she does her homework and if there is any light remaining in the day, she fills her time with reading or listening to music on the gramophone. Shower. Sleep. Begin again.

So a knock on the door on a Tuesday evening feels completely out-of-synch, like the jolt one feels when they take an extra step on a staircase and their foot falls through air.

She opens the door, and a man towers over her. He has dark brown hair and dark brown eyes and when the door is ajar, he looks at the air above her before adjusting his gaze downwards to her, an almost shocked expression on his face.

"You must be Miss Hawkeye."

It's not a question, so she doesn't answer. After a brief pause, his smile falters and he clears his throat awkwardly.

"Your father is expecting me. Is he available?"

She raises an eyebrow in question at him. Over the past couple of years, their only guests have been military men trying to recruit her father and large men in black clothing threatening to take their possessions as compensation for unpaid debt. This man isn't dressed suitably or intimidating enough to be either of those things. She has no idea what her father would want with him.

"Why is the door open, child? It's freezing!" Her father stumbles into the hall in slippers and a brown robe, eyes wide and frantic as he walks towards her. He will sometimes pace around the house when his head hurts too much to read and he is too manic to sleep. In those times, he will talk some nonsense to her about the house or school or what she is making for dinner, but it is always a one-sided conversation, and only sometimes makes sense. It is a tactic for him to clear his head of alchemy before beginning anew. Deconstructing and reconstructing. His inquiry is the first full sentence that she has heard in a long time.

When he gets closer to her, he stops in his tracks and looks at the stranger.

"Ah yes, that's right. Come in, come in." He gestures wildly with his hands, almost resembling a beckoning motion, if not for its jarring agitation. Riza opens the door further and steps aside as the boy enters. She notices the suitcase that he drags behind him and into the threshold.

"Mr. Hawkeye, sir."

"No 'sirs' here, my boy. I'll show you to the study, you're to be there tomorrow at sunrise." He turns to Riza. "Take the suitcase to the spare room." Back to the boy. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Oh, not yet."

Back to Riza. "Do we have enough to feed another?"

Riza simply nods, taking the suitcase and wheeling it down the hall to the spare room. She doesn't remember him ever worrying before about a person being fed; himself and her included.

"Do you see where she's going? You'll be sleeping there, my boy. Now come."

As Riza enters the room, she scans it to make sure it's suitable for sleeping. It is not one of the rooms she has on her cleaning roster – she can't recall a time when they had an overnight guest – but some dusting and a change of bedsheets would suffice until she has time to give it a proper clean.

Because of her father's inability to speak plainly, Riza has picked up how to understand things without all of the information given. There is a young man in the house, expected by her father. She will be feeding him. He has brought a suitcase and will be staying in the spare room. Her father is showing him to the study.

He is here to learn alchemy.

She knew he started receiving letters of request. Berthold Hawkeye used to teach chemistry part-time in the city, and when he gave it up and became a hermit, rumours spread through all of Eastern that he was focusing on alchemic research full-time, and that he had become obsessed with his work. Those rumours were true, but Riza still finds it exhausting that they are spread with such reverence and respect. He has become a romantic figure, someone who is pursuing truth at all cost, even the cost of his mind. People love to hear of tragic heroes and to glorify madness. Those people don't have to live with him. Except now this boy does.

The bills are paid on-time again for a few months, until the boy leaves again, screaming that he can't understand the madman and he's wasting his time trying to learn anything from him.

She never got his name.

* * *

The second time an unexpected knock comes, she is less surprised. When she opens the door and sees a blond, tanned man in his early twenties, she lets him in and takes his large suitcase. This time, her father does not leave his study, so she shows him straight to his room and informs him that tonight's dinner is porkchops and mixed veg, and that her father will see him in the morning.

The man introduces himself as Adam Wesley, and she amends it to Mr. Wesley as she tells him she will bring his food to him. His accent is strange, nothing she has heard before, but his voice is deep and musical. Before she closes the door, she spots him taking something from his suitcase. It is another, smaller case with a hard exterior, one side long and thin before curving into a larger hourglass shape. Her eyes linger on it a second more before the door blocks her view.

As she finishes preparing dinner, she hears slow, sombre notes blow through the house like a breeze. For a moment, her fathers mutterings in his study are almost as melodic.

When she brings his meal and sets it on the nightstand, he untucks the violin from his chin and smiles in thanks at her. She decides against asking him further questions and excuses herself.

Later in the evening, the violin music begins again. She hears the door of her father's study open and sees him poke his head out. He looks almost child-like in his curiosity. After a few moments, he smiles serenely, and it catches Riza off-guard to see her father smile like that. Like he is at peace.

He notices her watching him and turns his attention to her.

"Do you know the song?" His voice has lost its frantic edge, it comes out soft and steady.

Riza barely manages to register the words in her mind. She listens for a moment to the unfamiliar tune and shakes her head.

Her father smiles wider.

" _And I won't be sent across the sea_  
 _To fight in someone's war,_  
 _While my love stays here to wait for me_  
 _To wash up on the shore."_

A sea shanty, and a rebel song at that, by the sounds of it. Amestris is land-locked, and while they haven't banned music just yet, someone could get in a lot of trouble if they were caught by a soldier singing rebel songs. Most rebel songs are anti-Amestris, and for good reason, if her father's ranting about the military is anything to go by. But how does he know it? They are so far from the sea, and it's not like they get many foreign visitors, or visitors at all.

Still, looking at her father's tranquil smile fills her with a sense of calm herself. She returns the smile, a small tick in the corner of her lips, like she doesn't quite remember how. She suddenly wishes she knew the song, so she could sing him the next verse. He sang _to her_ , and she wishes that she could return it, that they could have a conversation in music. It is the closest she has ever felt to her father, and so she smiles.

Her father hums under his breath and returns to his study, closing the door softly behind him. Riza is suddenly stricken by the thought that while she has learned to read her father's eccentricities, he wasn't always like this. He had a past and a mind at some point. For the first time, the question comes to Riza's mind: Just exactly who is her father?

* * *

 _"What should I call you?"_

 _"Pardon?"_

 _"I never thought to ask before. Do you have a name?"_

 _He chuckles. "I like it when you treat me like we're friends."_

 _She frowns. "Aren't we?"_

 _"Don't be offended. Friendships aren't anything particularly special. Everyone experiences them at some point, they are as common as algae in a lake."_

 _"But I still think I should call you something."_

 _He sits up from his place on the grass and looks down at her, hair spilling in his face._

 _"You have no reason to call me anything."_

 _"But what if I want to… summon you?"_

 _He smiles. "Summon me?"_

 _Her cheeks flush. "I don't know the right word."_

 _"I'm either here or I'm not, Riza. You don't call for me, I come and go as I please."_

 _"So you're here because you want to be?"_

 _"Yes."_

 _"Why do you want to be here?"_

 _His grin widens, wrinkles cutting through the papery white skin at the corners of his mouth. "You amuse me. You're a very interesting little birdy, you know. They don't see it, but they don't care enough to look. All day surrounded by madness, and it hasn't taken you yet. Very interesting indeed."_

 _Riza looks up at him and considers the words. She doesn't know what a friend is, especially if she was willing for a second to entertain the idea of this being as a friend. But she has never held the interest of anybody before. Her mother adored her, but that was the business of mothers. And even the duty of parenthood couldn't bring her father to show much in the way of love, or even interest._

 _If it's all she has, she'll take it._

* * *

The oldest person in Riza's class is soon to be sixteen. She herself is the youngest by far, thirteen years old and two years ahead by merit of her studies. She has a degree of natural talent and no small amount of work ethic, and although she doesn't want to leave school early and find herself in the limbo of her home until she is old enough to leave, she also couldn't turn down the offers to skip a couple of years for fear of losing her scholarship.

The children in her class are more mature company than she had previously been accustomed to, but they are also completely uninterested in befriending a child. She doesn't blame them; she has similar reservations. The teachers are always trying to catch her out, as if they are angry with her for being in their class. She answers their impromptu questions with quiet mumbles and takes their annoyed silences as validation of her proficiency.

She studies three languages for her electives, ancient Xerxean (many of her father's textbooks at home double as excellent study aids), Aerugian (she picked it before her father's Aerugan apprentice Mister Wesley arrived) and Cretian. She enjoys learning about the cultures of different countries, especially since she can't remember ever having left her village. Isvallan was on the curriculum a few years ago before the study of the language was banned for seemingly no reason. Her Aerugian teacher believes that their curriculum may be next, as the rebel groups in Aerugo have begun to grow in power and mobilise towards the border with Amestris.

Riza worries that this stupid country will go to war with everyone, and all languages will be banned except Xerxean, which is technically a dead language. Riza worries that none of the languages will be banned because they will _all_ become dead languages.

When she has to decide on her fourth elective, she considers her options carefully. She could go the easy route and pick something she is good at in order to further secure her good grades and her scholarship. But she is good at chemistry, and some physics, and she knows that she doesn't want to take any path that would use them. They are too much like alchemy, and she never wants to entertain the idea of pursuing that. Her father lost his footing on his path, stumbled and fell and his mind came tumbling out. If she were to follow in his footsteps, she would fall into the same trap.

She listens to her teacher go through the options, listing the name of the class along with some basic information. Her ears prick when her teacher explains one in particular.

"Philosophy. The study of being. Along with learning rhetoric and logic, you would also be studying ethics, what is morally wrong or right, and who gets to decide these morals. In essence, it is the study of being. What is it to exist, what makes us human, what is our purpose?"

Her mind lingers on the image of the long-haired boy by the lake, with his unsettling thin smile and pale skin, and the unanswered question he asked her almost three years ago:

" _So what am I doing here, then_?"

She signs up for philosophy.

* * *

She is expected to take up three extracurricular activities to fill the free periods in her timetable. Her options are wide but her parameters are narrow. There are two divisions, culture and sport. She cannot do three activities in one division, it has to be two of one, one of the other.

She picks two sports and one culture activity. Her sports are easy choices, she signs up for martial arts and archery. Most other sports available are team-based, and not only does she dislike the forced interaction with her classmates, they are also older and bigger than her, and while she could handle one-at-a-time, she doubts her chances against entire squads of them.

She is small and quick and surprisingly strong, so she flourishes easily in martial arts. The two strains of martial arts they learn are judo and kickboxing. With judo, she finds it hard to throw people but they find it harder to catch her, so she tires them out and waits for the perfect grappling opportunity. With kickboxing, the points system they use is all about scoring hits, so she ducks and weaves and lands small, quick jabs at her opponents as they complain that she is too small to fight.

With regards to archery, her coach considers her a prodigy. She has always had a good eye, and she quickly learns the optimum posture and breathing necessary to keep a steady hand. She feels a real sense of power, holding her bow. It is school property, but so few have taken up archery this year that she is the only one to use it. She keeps it in a separate corner of the equipment shed so it doesn't get trampled by carelessly flung balls or rowing equipment. She treats it carefully, afraid that if anything happens to it, she will have to find another sport.

She enjoys the feeling of blocking out every sound and focusing solely on the tiny red dot in the center of the target. The sensation of dulling all of her senses until she is left with just her sight is not entirely unlike the muted feeling of floating in water.

She has left it so long to choose her third activity that the principle is threatening to choose for her. She does not want to spend two hours a week playing chess, especially since the students who choose chess mainly do so in order to chat freely for the duration. Nothing else really stands out to her; theatre is far too showy, creative writing doesn't grab her as something her clinical mind would be able to grasp and she did not want to draw candlesticks or paint fruit.

The threat of not getting to choose follows her home that evening. She is listing through the options in her head as she walks in the door, trying to figure out the lesser evils. It takes her a moment before she hears the loud conversation in her father's study.

"-to help my people!"

"And a noble cause it is."

"But you won't give it?"

"It hasn't been perfected yet. Too volatile."

"They're going to destroy my country!"

"I'm sorry, my boy."

"Don't call me that! I'm not a child and I'm not your son!"

"You aren't even far enough in your-"

"I don't need basic alchemy! I need to fight!"

"I cannot give you what you want."

A beat.

"Then I have no purpose being here."

Mister Wesley storms out of the study, face red and breathing heavily. He stomps towards his room and almost collides with her before he sees her.

"Miss Hawkeye. _Piccolina_."

She doesn't care for the endearment. "What is wrong?"

"I… need to go home to help my family. I am sorry, child. I wish you the best of luck."

He goes to his room, and as the door closes behind him she is left in the kitchen.

Mister Wesley had made it almost a year under the tutelage of her father. He is polite and sometimes a little too familiar with Riza, treating her like a little sister even though Riza had never really spoken to him. She won't miss him.

But his violin and his general presence makes her father much easier to deal with. He speaks in coherent sentences, goes to bed because he knows he has a student to teach in the mornings and sings softly to the fiddle's renditions of rebel songs in the evenings. She will not miss the apprentice, but she will miss the music in the evenings.

Her father emerges from his study and paces the hallway.

"Wish I could help. Not good enough. Not finished. And _him_. Barely capable. Too powerful. No. No. Can't help. Luck to him. Military dogs!" He sees her. "They'll come for me, Riza. War is coming. Recruitment team. Don't let them in. Blue coats. Don't let them in."

She gathers the jist of what he is saying and nods, her eyes stinging as she regards his widened eyes. He has been so much better in the past year. He has asked her into his study to help him translate Xerxean texts. He has sat at the table during dinnertime. He has sung along with Mr. Wesley's violin, and when she had picked up enough lyrics, she had sung along with him. He smiled when she did, his face plainly beaming with the kind of pride Riza suspects is normal for a father to show his thirteen year old daughter. They had a semblance of normalcy, and she can already feel it slipping away again.

Mr. Wesley exits his room, suitcase in tow, and shoots her one last apologetic look as he leaves, before glaring at her father. As her father watches him through the window, he mutters incoherently again.

"They'll come. Aerugean student, stupid of me. They'll come. For me. Oh God, for her. Stay away from her! No, she's safe. Keep her in school. She knows nothing. They can't take her. They can't take her."

Riza looks up at his pained face as he continues to blather on to himself. He looks like he has woken from a nightmare, and the sound of his half-sentences are so pained they make her want to cry. She drowns out the sound with something more peaceful.

" _Come ye men, it's time again_  
 _To show them all we're worth,_  
 _They put a price on everything_  
 _That's good about this earth…"_

The effect is instantaneous, her father's shoulders relax and he half-closes his eyes. He doesn't smile, but his face softens into something less anxious, as if his thoughts have settled for the time being. She wishes desperately to keep that look on his face forever. In the back of her mind, she decides wholeheartedly on what her extra-curricular activity is going to be.

He sings along with her for the next verse.

 _"But they have undervalued us,_  
 _And they'll live to rue the day,_  
 _When they discover that their lives_  
 _Are the only price to pay."_

* * *

 **A/N: Prepare for more entirely made-up or real-but-modified rebel songs in the future. I want Riza to have a real anti-military sentiment before she ultimately decides to join up.**


	3. Chapter 3: Simulacrum

**A/N: Don't call it a comeback.**

 _Simulacrum (n): A representation or imitation of a person or thing._

The muscles of her arms are burning by the time she's finished scraping her skirt against the washboard. Her teacher had caught her this afternoon, lifting the skirt and tying the hem of it into a ball by her knee as she was leaving school. They hate when they catch her doing this, they say it's disrespectful, so she was told to untie it and wear it properly. She walked home in compliance with the dress-code and the bottom three inches of her skirt got caked in mud as a result.

Her walk home is mostly secluded from the village, she doesn't understand why she can't wear her skirt however she wants. It's easier to wash mud from her shins than her clothes and besides, she only has one school uniform. So now she has to do a wash even though it isn't the day for it. She decides to do all the laundry in one go — no point wasting the time and hot water on one skirt. She hums as she pushes the clothes back and forth, the washboard creating a rhythm for her tune.

As she's hanging the clothes and linens on the line, she hears a gasp. Turning around, she sees two adults quickly turning their backs on her. She doesn't get a look at their faces but she doesn't need to. Their clothes give them away. _Bluecoats._ Her shoulders tense towards her neck and she crouches slightly to keep her knees from locking.

One of them unbuttons their coat and slides it off their shoulders, displaying the criss-cross of leather straps across the back of their shirt. Without turning, they pass it back behind them, holding it out in her general direction.

She stares at it for a while before she understands the gesture. She looks down at her own body, her pale skin dotted with occasional brown and purple bruises. How silly of them, she thinks. They can kill and take land and still sleep at night, but she can make them so uncomfortable they cannot bear to look at her.

"What do you want?" She tries to keep her voice steady. These are the people she sings about, soldiers with guns and cannons and no regard for the carnage they inflict.

"Please, take it," the arm holding the coat waves it like a flag, the voice tinged with desperate discomfort.

This doesn't sound like the voice of someone who will kill her for disobedience, but that is their job, isn't it? She is surprised to feel a discomfort of her own, not at their occupation but at their reaction to her. The surprise morphs into a knee-jerk irritation. How dare they make her feel as if she has done something wrong, and they the ones coming to her home unwanted? Still, no matter her discomfort, she won't wear a blue coat. Even the thought disgusts her. And what if her father saw?

She compromises, taking her nightdress from the line and pulling it over herself. It is darkened and heavy with water, trying to pull her down along with the escaped droplets that drip from its hem. They must hear her shuffling, because when she repeats her question they turn around, slowly and flinchingly, eyes barely open to see that she is clothed, before they visibly relax.

This time, the other answers. "We are here to speak to Mister Hawkeye." One puts his coat back on. When they leave, she won't remember a single detail of their faces, only the blue uniform and ramrod-straight statures. Her own school uniform is blue too, but a darker blue. It's the reason she only has one. Blue dye isn't cheap, yet they dress their entire military in it. It seems decadent to her.

"We would have knocked on the door," the other continues, "but we heard someone back here." He bends at the waist slightly, his head closer to her eye level so she can see his wide, thin smile. "You must be Riza. You have a lovely voice by the way."

He wouldn't think that if he knew the words to the song she was humming.

They've come many times for her father over the years, she can tell by the broken pieces of conversation he has with himself when she comes home from school. Disjointed dialogue, but she hears 'Bluecoats' or 'recruit' or 'dogs', and she understands. This is the first time she's home for their visit, and she desperately wishes they'd arrived and left earlier. She recalls the fight between father and mother. _They'll take her and they'll use her…_

She is suddenly hyper aware of the fact that she is alone with them. Would her father come outside if she were to scream? If they grabbed her, stuffed her into a car right now, how long would it take someone to look for her? If she was seen on a train in soaked pajamas, would anyone even question the two Bluecoats pulling at her arms?

She wants to step backwards but wills her body to stay still. If she needs to run, she can't give them any notice. In her peripheral, she looks for the trees leading to the lake. She could lose them in the woods if they didn't shoot her first, maybe.

If a tree falls in the woods, and nobody is around to hear, does it make a sound?

If a girl falls in the woods, and nobody is around to care, does it even matter?

She's been quiet for too long, they shift uncomfortably. The one who had offered her the coat clears his throat. "So is he home?"

She blinks away her macabre train of thought. Her philosophy lessons have been a nuisance, really. "He won't want to see you."

They share a look with each other for a long moment. When they turn to face her again, One speaks slowly.

"We've come quite a long way…"

Other chimes in. "We won't take up too much of his time."

Riza can feel her head bowing, her body trying to make itself smaller. She isn't exactly in a position to refuse them, and the opened, freshly-adorned jacket of One shows a peek of a harness, its object of security glinting just under his armpit. But she isn't about to lead them into her house either, to call her father from his study and stand among the people he despises most. Again, she wishes she were still in school.

She compromises in the only way she can think of. She shrugs a shoulder and turns back to her laundry on the line.

"I'm not going to stop you. Knock on the door."

She doesn't turn around as she hears them linger for a moment before their footsteps retreat around to the front of the house. When she hears the echoes of knuckles on wood, she resumes humming. She doesn't dare sing the words aloud, but she hears them clearly in her head.

 _Your houses they pull down_  
To fright the poor men in the town,  
But the gentry must fall down  
And the poor shall wear the crown,  
Stand up now, stand up now.

* * *

If there's one thing she's learned from her music lessons, it's that a surprising amount of women die in songs.

The two songs they are studying now are tragedies. One is based off an old Xerxian tale, in which a woman is cursed by the Gods to be unable to speak, unless she is repeating other people's words. Scorned by the man she loved, she wastes away until she is only her voice. The music is a canon, the same piece is repeated, starting at different times. The other song is about a man who is waiting to be hung for murdering his young betrothed. In both songs, the women are portrayed as virtuous and ethereally beautiful, until they are portrayed as dead.

She uses the school's violin, and she is allowed to bring it home for the weekends, since she doesn't have one of her own. It's the only reason she chose the violin over the piano. She is supposed to learn the songs that they are studying, but more often than not she tries to remember by ear the songs that filled the house a couple of months ago.

Sitting by the lake, she successfully plays one of the easier tunes the whole way through for the first time. She is improving, her fingers learning where to press and hardening to the wiry strings. When she plays the song through a couple more times, just to make sure she remembers how, she packs away the violin and bow carefully. Her visitor doesn't appear today, hasn't appeared for a few weeks now, but she has learned not to expect him.

She's been catching herself missing Mister Wesley recently. The noise he brought to the house with him only helped punctuate the silence of the house without him. No music, no chatter between master and student, no overly-familiar _piccolina_ or _gattina_. She finds it strange that she misses being annoyed by him. She wonders if he ever thinks of her, if there was a missed opportunity for love between the two. Not romantic love, something far less tragic than that. She wishes she had given him a part of herself, so as that part could travel beyond the town, beyond Amestris. Maybe it could have seen the sea.

By the time she returns home, it's dark. She had prepared and served dinner before she left the house, and she always schedules her time by the lake, so she has no duties except sleep.

As she removes her shoes by the door, she hears shuffling feet from the kitchen. She instantly knows they are not her father's footsteps, though they are similarly slow. When a figure darkens the doorway at the other end of the hall, she freezes, one shoe still half-laced on her foot.

It's a boy. He's probably about seventeen or eighteen years old, but it's hard to tell his age from his face. He looks chubby-cheeked, like a toddler, but his baby fat ends at his jawline and the rest of him is stringy like cartilage. His hair is messy and unkempt, black and with a fringe like strips of liquorice. He is hunched over slightly, shoulders hugging his ears. His dark hair and dark clothes make him almost indistinguishable from the shadow he casts on the wall. When he takes a few steps towards her, he is tentative, every movement slow and deliberate, as if he is trying to stay upright on a tilting rowboat. She can't decide whether he looks like he is afraid of her or afraid of scaring her away.

"Hello?" he offers quietly, his voice smooth but unsure.

She hunches over too, crouches as her muscles lock into place. "Who are you?"

He seems to relax a little when he sees how small she is. "I'm Master Hawkeye's new student. Are you his daughter?"

He approaches her with surer steps, his wariness peeling away to display a casual smile. As his shadow falls on her, she straightens as well, nodding her head before bowing it like she would if a teacher addressed her.

He stops a couple of short steps apart from her and extended his hand, the corner of his eyes crinkling as his smile grows.

"Roy Mustang. Your dad told me you'd show me my room, but he called for you a couple times and then just wandered off."

Riza takes his hand and shakes it briefly. "I will show you now, Mr. Mustang. Is your luggage in the living room?"

He laughs, light and airy. She feels a couple of strands of her fringe move with his breath. "Slow down there. What's your name?"

She looks up from her feet. He is over a head taller than her and close enough that she has to crane her neck to meet his gaze, but when she does, she pauses.

His eyes are different, unlike any she's seen before. Too beautiful to be call a deformity, but definitely a strange shape. And a dark, dark grey, almost the same color as his pupils, the surrounding whites almost glowing in contrast. They shine kinetically, like flowing liquid. The way he carries himself, smiles easily, is surely considered handsome, but he would be considered beautiful by his eyes alone.

"Riza. Hawkeye." She is used to being quiet, but even she is surprised by the whisper of her voice as she answers.

The boy's brow twitches. "Riza…" he repeats thoughtfully. Then, after a moment: "Is that short for something?"

It takes her a few seconds to understand the question. "No."

He frowns, as if she has answered him incorrectly. "I've never heard it before, it sounds like a nickname. Are you sure it's not short for anything?"

Her voice loses all whisper. "I know my name!" she spits, a resentment swelling in her stomach at the question. She may not use it often, but it's one of the few parts of herself she doesn't have to question and she doesn't like this stranger doubting something so simple. "And it's longer than 'Roy' anyway," she adds, somewhat defensively.

His eyes widen at the outburst. "Okay, okay. Nice to meet you Riza."

"Miss Hawkeye."

He cocks an eyebrow, his lips tilting into a half-smile that instantly infuriates her. "Really?"

Instead of answering, she walks past him in the narrow hallway towards the living room. It's only after she takes a few steps that she realizes she's still wearing one half-laced shoe, but she has already committed to walking away and she can't turn back to remove it. Judging by the quiet snicker behind her, he has also noticed her mistake. She walks as if limping, careful that the shoe doesn't slip off mid-stride, and tries to ignore him.

She finds his luggage — a huge, burgundy bag that looks like it is about to burst open — and hauls it over her shoulder. The weight almost topples her but she manages to correct her balance on time as she trods to the spare room. She didn't know to expect a new student (though she should have, the envelopes were starting to arrive in blaring red again) so she hasn't cleaned the room in a while, but she doesn't feel too bad about it. Let the boy inhale dust. She dumps the bag in the corner and waits for his footsteps to catch up with her.

"This is your room. Breakfast is at seven, and you'll be expected in the study straight after." She turns to leave, brushing past him again. "Goodnight Mister Mustang."

"It's barely nine o'clock!"

She decides that that's hardly her problem, and leaves without responding.

* * *

 _Black bushes separating white fields. Black trees and with grey branches. Black the road she walks. Or floats? Looks down where feet should be. Just the black road. No buildings, no people, no noise._

 _Road twists, no straights only curves. Turns each corner. Another corner. Another field, white grass white crops, swaying in the wind, bending. No noise._

 _Goes off-road, into a field. Wheat that reaches her waist, bending in the wind. Cannot feel the wind. Wheat that reaches her shoulders. Wheat that reaches her eyes. Wheat that reaches far above her. Trees now. Black leaves, white branches._

 _Faster, through the trees. Leaves bend wind blows no noise. Panting, but no noise. Looks down, white grass black path. Faster, through the trees. Screaming, but no noise. Scream, scream, lungs burn throat hurts but no noise._

 _If a girl falls in the woods…_

She wakes up under the covers, the air muggy and warmed by stale breath. She instinctively thrashes until the covers tangle beneath her waist and gasps until she feels cold air. Panting, her blurred vision slowly sharpens until she can see the crisp edge of her windowsill. Her room is lit up by the stars and the moon, just enough to see silhouettes and shadows. Every inhale shakes her ribs and every exhale releases a thin puff of steam. When she manages to control her breaths, she blinks repeatedly to try and relax her eyes.

She doesn't notice the footsteps until they stop, the silence alerting her retroactively to the noise.

"Hello?" The voice is soft, hesitant, just like it was the first time she heard it.

She holds her breath instinctively, moving only her eyes until they rest on the door. The silence stretches and she feels like she's been caught; that she's done something to superfluous and called unnecessary attention to herself. She is about to get discovered in a moment of weakness, and she doesn't like how it feels; being concerned that she appears weak. She shouldn't care what the rude apprentice thinks.

Eventually, the footsteps retreat, and Riza slowly exhales a thin stream of breath. She understands now that she can't act however she pleases, not when there's someone around to witness it.

* * *

She forgets him while she prepares breakfast, muscle-memory being what it is. It is only when she takes two plates from the cupboard that she remembers that there should be a third.

Instead of dividing the food up equally, she decides to serve their breakfast and quickly make something for herself. She brings one plate upstairs, knocking on the door and entering.

Her father stirs under his covers, turning around to lie on his side facing away from the door. She places the plate on his nightstand and hopes that the smell of buttery toast and eggs will be enough to rouse him.

When she comes back downstairs, Mister Mustang is in the living room. His hair is messy and sticking out at odd angles, and his bedclothes are loose, his pajama pants so far down on his hips that he is standing on the bottom few inches of plaid material. His eyelids are heavy and as he stretches into a yawn, the bottom of his ribcage is visible through his shirt.

"Mornin'" he mumbles lazily. "Something smells good."

She hurriedly walks to the kitchen and retrieves his plate. When she returns to the living room, she holds the plate in front of her, suddenly unsure of what to do.

"Where do you want to eat?" She had planned on taking it to his room, but he's here now.

He rubs his eyes and smacks his lips a few times as if he is trying to adjust his jaw. "The table seems like a good spot." He looks around the room. "Um, where is your table?"

She leads him to the dining room and places the plate and cutlery down. He yawns again as he sits, barely able to keep his eyes open.

"Is your dad not eating?"

"He takes his breakfast in his room." After Mister Wesley spilled stew on a textbook, her father has banned all food from the study, so lunch and dinner is eaten at the table. But he still doesn't know how to wake himself up so breakfast is always served in his bedroom. Going to bed at night is a habit he hasn't dropped even in the few months without a student, and Riza is thankful for that. He is far easier to be around when he is not manic from sleep deprivation.

Mister Mustang finally looks at her for the first time this morning. "Are _you_ not eating?"

"I'm just about to make something."

"Oh. I'll wait for you."

Her first instinct is to ask _why_ , it seems silly to wait until she's ready before he eats. Instead, she just shakes her head. "It will go cold."

He picks up a slice of toast and shrugs. "If you're sure…"

As she returns to the kitchen, she hears the snap of crisp bread behind her.

* * *

When she finishes breakfast, she goes upstairs to retrieve her father's plate. He is just finishing the last forkful of eggs when she enters. He hands her the plate while his mouth is still full.

After a loud swallow, he asks: "Is the boy up yet?"

"Yes, papa."

"Good. Shouldn't you be in uniform?"

"Today is Saturday."

"Ah. No matter."

She pauses before opening the door. Hesitant, she turns around again slowly.

"Papa?"

He swings his legs off the bed and looks irritatedly for his slippers. "What is it, child?"

She almost loses her nerve, but after a deep breath, she finally speaks. "Is Riza my full name?"

The question surprises him, his face severe as he glances up at her. Then, his expression softens, his eyes glazing over in the same contented way they do when he hears an old song. He smiles a gentle smile, as if only smiling to himself.

"Riza… Short for Teresa."

Riza's stomach drops.

He continues without noticing her unease. " _Teresa of Duty_. An old tale, your mother loved it. The most beautiful of her kind." He closes his eyes contentedly. "After her beloved is killed, his murderer plans to take her as his wife. So devoted was she to her beloved, she chose instead to throw herself in front of a chariot and end her life."

Her father stays in his trance, recalling the story or Riza's birth or some treasured memory. Riza doesn't really care what he is thinking about, just as he unquestionably doesn't care about her thoughts. She has been curious about her father, about who he was before he was a widow, a father. She knows he has a past, secrets, and he is allowed them. But to keep her name for her, to let her think she was someone else entirely. _Riza_ never existed. _Riza_ was a placeholder for someone else entirely, someone she doesn't know but is supposed to _be_. She feels hatred clawing at her throat, a violent hatred she's never felt before. For her father, for the carefree teenage boy who made her question her name, for her mother for naming her.

Most of all she hates Teresa, her namesake. An old tale, no doubt an old orchestral piece to accompany her story. Another tragic character. Another beautiful, dead woman.

* * *

 **A/N: A lot of actual stories/songs have been twisted to make this story. The term 'Bluecoats' was what Irish people used to describe the Irish Fascists in the early/mid 20th Century. The story of Teresa is an adaptation of "Dierdre of Sorrows" (Which is an adaptation of the Iliad). The song about a woman who fades to a voice is the story of Echo and Narcissus. The song Riza hums while doing laundry is a 17th century protest song called "The Digger's Song".**


End file.
